It takes some straining to see, but there does appear to be a faint view of some Anglo Dem angst at Metro inside the loop. It obviously wasn't enough to turn a majority in many precincts as almost all of the pure, "No" boxes were simply due to low numbers in split precincts voting against.

What you'd make of the lack of enthusiasm for the referendum outside of that, I'm interested in hearing any theories.

So if the light blue/green indicates strong support of the Metro referendum, what about the dark blue? This seems exactly the opposite to what I might have expected. I’m afraid I’m not understanding this, but would really like to. Thanks for doing it.

I’m guilty of haste in explaining that. Dark blue is 75-100% “Yes”; light blue is 50-75% “Yes; red is where the “No” vote prevailed. I’m inclined to stick with this coloring format for all of the other bonds/refs I map out from this cycle, also.

So even the inner city folks voted to end light rail and do more roads in Harris County? How depressing. I wonder what the reason could be for those three widely spaced districts where people voted for transit?

The sections with pure “No” votes on the referendum are more likely explained as being dictated by a low number of voters. The biggest of the No boxes had three votes. I wouldn’t read anything substantive about any geographic reason for their voting. The reason for adding a breakpoint for seeing where there were differences in the degree to which the “Yes” votes differed in intensity was designed to show where there may be greater differences in voting behavior – regardless of what their motivation may have been.

HA! Metro had an election in which either way it gets to keep the money. Why would anyone vote to continue light rail (except if you are a hotshot insider land developer) which starts at nowhere and goes to nowhere. I live 1 block off Westheimer near Galleria. Everyone you ask says “since Westheimer has the most traffic of any street in the Houston area, why not rail down the center of it”. BUT NO, because Westheimer is a state highway, the land developers can never get ownership of the right of way which they can sell to Metro at huge profits so they tell their minions at Metro–take it down Richmond–we own that land….